https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/04/us/politics/russia-generals-killed-ukraine.html
<blockquote>The United States has provided intelligence about Russian units that has allowed Ukrainians to target and kill many of the Russian generals who have died in action in the Ukraine war,
according to senior American officials.
Ukrainian officials said they have killed approximately 12 generals on the front lines, a number that has astonished military analysts.
The targeting help is part of a classified effort by the Biden administration to provide real-time battlefield intelligence to Ukraine.
...
U.S. intelligence support to the Ukrainians has had a decisive effect on the battlefield, confirming targets identified by the Ukrainian military and pointing it to new targets.
The flow of actionable intelligence on the movement of Russian troops that America has given Ukraine has few precedents.
...
The administration has sought to keep much of the battlefield intelligence secret, out of fear it will be seen as an escalation and provoke President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia into a wider war.
...
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III went so far as to say last month that
“we want to see Russia weakened to the degree it cannot do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”
...
Not all the strikes have been carried out with American intelligence.
A strike over the weekend at a location in eastern Ukraine where Gen. Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, had visited was not aided by American intelligence, according to multiple U.S. officials.
The United States prohibits itself from providing intelligence about the most senior Russian leaders, officials said.
But American intelligence was critical in the deaths of other generals, officials acknowledged.
The United States routinely provides information about the movement of Russian troops and equipment, and helps Ukraine confirm the location of critical targets. Other NATO allies also give real-time intelligence to the Ukrainian military.
The Biden administration is also supplying new weaponry that should improve Ukraine’s ability to target senior Russian officers. The smaller version of the Switchblade drone, which is now arriving on the battlefield, can be used to identify and kill individual soldiers, and could take out a general sitting in a vehicle or giving orders on a front line.
American officials have acknowledged publicly that the United States began giving Ukraine actionable intelligence in the run-up to Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24. Ahead of the invasion, for example, U.S. intelligence agencies warned of an impending attack on the Hostomel airport north of Kyiv. That allowed Ukraine to strengthen its defenses. Russian airborne forces were ultimately unable to hold the airfield.
...
Although the administration remains wary of inflaming Mr. Putin to the point that he further escalates his attacks — President Biden has said he will not send American troops to Ukraine or establish a “no-fly zone” there — current and former officials said the White House finds some value in warning Russia that Ukraine has the weight of the United States and NATO behind it.
Some European officials believe, despite Mr. Putin’s rhetoric that Russia is battling NATO and the West, he has so far been deterred from starting a wider war. American officials are less certain, and have been debating for weeks why Mr. Putin has not done more to escalate the conflict.
Officials said Moscow has its own calculations to weigh, including whether it can handle a bigger war, particularly one that would allow NATO to invoke its mutual defense charter or enter the war more directly.
“Clearly, we want the Russians to know on some level that we are helping the Ukrainians to this extent, and we will continue to do so,” said Evelyn Farkas, the former top Defense Department official for Russia and Ukraine in the Obama administration.
<b>“We will give them everything they need to win,
and we’re not afraid of Vladimir Putin’s reaction to that.
[KH comment:
They certainly should be,
due to their responsibility to the American people.
Putting the American people at risk because of the attachment of some to Ukraine??
I call that insanity.]</b>
We won’t be self-deterred.”
But intelligence sharing is considered a safe form of help because it is invisible, or, at least, deniable. American intelligence has given secret information to Ukraine in a wide range of areas, from Russian troop movements to targeting data, officials said.
Last month, the United States increased the flow of intelligence to Ukraine about Russian forces in the Donbas and Crimea, as Kyiv’s military forces prepared to defend against a renewed offensive by Moscow in eastern Ukraine, U.S. officials said.
“There’s a significant amount of intelligence flowing to Ukraine from the United States,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Senate panel on Tuesday. “We have opened up the pipes.”
<hr>
Card 1 of 4
Fears of an expanded war rise. With the Russian military still struggling, Western officials are looking with increased alarm to Russia’s Victory Day holiday on May 9. Anxiety is growing that President Vladimir V. Putin will exploit the celebration of the Soviet triumph over the Nazis to intensify attacks and formally declare war.
</blockquote>
<hr />
This <i>NYT</i> report is also quoted at length in:
https://www.newsmax.com/us/russia-ukraine-war-generals/2022/05/04/id/1068549/
The killing of these Russian generals is discussed at turcopolier.com:
https://turcopolier.com/yes-so-what/
<hr />
Patrick Buchanan has a 2022-05-10 column on this:
<b>Is Ukraine’s War Now America’s War?</b>
https://buchanan.org/blog/is-ukraines-war-now-americas-war-159368
See also this very informative article,
with many quotes from Russian figures:
2022-05-31
https://news.yahoo.com/kremlin-tv-names-country-putin-013530205.html
(Largely excepted from:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-state-tv-vladimir-putin-may-start-a-nuclear-war-but-we-are-ready-to-die )
<blockquote>On the state TV show 60 Minutes, host Olga Skabeeva announced:
“I have some unpleasant news...
Even though we are methodically destroying the weapons that are being delivered [to Ukraine], but
<I>the quantities in which the United States are sending them</I>
force us to come up with some global conclusions.
Perhaps it’s time to acknowledge that maybe Russia’s special operation in Ukraine has come to an end, in a sense that a real war had started: WWIII.
We’re forced to conduct the demilitarization not only of Ukraine, but of the entire NATO alliance".</blockquote>
Note well that the complaint is about the arms the U.S. is sending to Ukraine.
Shipments which have nothing whatsoever to do with U.S. national security,
but are simply being made to placate Ukraine's almost unbelievably powerful lobby in the United States.
If, God forbid, WWIII comes,
these are the people to be blamed for it.
<hr />
2022-06-09
A big, big way in which the U.S. is hugely increasing the risk of a nuclear apocalypse is through its sending of advanced offensive arms, in particular, various missile systems, to Ukraine.
That Russian leadership is very, very worried about such offensive systems
is made excruciatingly clear by statements by a Russian official quoted in this article:
<b>Russian State TV Warns of Nuclear War That Only 'Mutants' Will Survive</b>
https://www.newsweek.com/russian-state-tv-vladimir-solovyov-nuclear-war-nato-support-mutants-survive-ukraine-1713352
I, personally, am in despair over this issue.
Russians have made it very clear that they have red lines,
the crossing of which will lead to a nuclear holocaust.
Yet the U.S. leadership, egged on by media figures such as Max Boot, comes perilously close to breaching those red lines,
by continuing to arm Ukraine.
For a sample of what some people consider acceptable to send to Ukraine, see
https://turcopolier.com/a-primer-on-the-m270-mlrs-and-m142-himars-ttg/
This is, IMO, insanity.
-----------
2022-07-14
A very important July 14 column from Pat Buchanan:
<a href="https://buchanan.org/blog/is-a-us-russia-war-becoming-inevitable-159511"><b>Is a US-Russia War Becoming Inevitable?</b></a>
<blockquote>At the NATO summit in Madrid, Finland was invited to join the alliance.
...
What does Finland’s membership in NATO mean for America?
If Putin makes a military move into Finland, the U.S. will go to war against the world’s largest nation with an arsenal of between 4,500 and 6,000 battlefield and strategic nuclear weapons.
No Cold War president would have dreamed of making such a commitment —
to risk the survival of our nation to defend territory of a country thousands of miles away that has never been a U.S. vital interest.
<b>To go to war with the Soviet Union over the preservation of Finnish territory
would have been seen as madness during the Cold War.</b>
...
It is a dictum of geostrategic politics that a great power ought never cede to a lesser power the ability to draw it into a great war.
In 1914, the kaiser’s Germany gave its Austrian ally a “blank check” to punish Serbia for its role in the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne.
Vienna cashed the kaiser’s check and attacked Serbia, and the Great War of 1914-1918 was on.
In March 1939, Neville Chamberlain issued a war guarantee to Poland. If Germany attacked Poland, Britain would fight on Poland’s side.
Fortified with this war guarantee from the British Empire, the Poles stonewalled Hitler, refusing to talk to Berlin over German claims to the city of Danzig, taken from her at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.
On Sept. 1, 1939, Hitler attacked and Britain declared war, a war that lasted six years and mortally wounded the British Empire.
...
Over the last quarter-century, after Russia dissolved the Warsaw Pact and let the USSR break apart into 15 nations, we pushed NATO, created to corral and contain Russia, into Central and Eastern Europe.
In 2008, neocons goaded Georgia into attacking South Ossetia, provoking Russian intervention and the rout of the Georgian army.
In 2014, neocons goaded Ukrainians into overthrowing the elected pro-Russian regime in Kyiv. When they succeeded, Putin seized Crimea and Sevastopol, for centuries the home base of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
In 2022, Moscow asked the U.S. to pledge not to bring Ukraine into NATO. We refused. And Putin attacked.
If Russians believe their country has been pushed against a wall by the West, can we blame them?
Americans appear dismissive of dark Russian warnings that rather than accept defeat in Ukraine, the humiliation of their nation, and their encirclement and isolation,
they will resort to tactical nuclear weapons.
Is it really wisdom to dismiss these warnings as “saber-rattling”?</blockquote>
I will add a comment of my own:
If Putin and the Russian people see their national interest being severely harmed by weapons supplied by America
(referring to the effect of the HIMARS rockets),
is that not cause for them to attack America in retaliation?
We, America, have done far too much to provoke Russia.
---------
More news reports:
2022-08-11
https://www.newsweek.com/us-air-division-sent-europe-after-kremlin-says-russia-nato-war-1733022
<blockquote>Sergey Kiriyenko, the first deputy chief of the Russian presidential staff, alleged that
the West was conducting a "hot military operation" against Russia in Ukraine.
"We understand very well that on the territory of Ukraine we are not at war with Ukraine and, of course, not with Ukrainians,"
Russian state-owned news agency Tass quoted him as saying.
"The entire NATO bloc is fighting a war against Russia, on the territory of Ukraine and by the Ukrainians' hands."</blockquote>
---------
2022-09-03
https://www.newsweek.com/russian-official-issues-stark-nuclear-warning-us-chess-game-death-1739674
In a Telegram post made after last week's funeral of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, <b>Medvedev</b> accused the West of wanting to take "advantage of the military conflict in Ukraine" to "eliminate Russia from the political field."
"Those are the dirty dreams of the Anglo-Saxon perverts, who go to sleep with a secret thought about the breakup of our state, thinking about how to shred us into pieces, cut us into small bits." Medvedev wrote in the translated post. "Such attempts are very dangerous and mustn't be underestimated. Those dreamers ignore a simple axiom: a forceful disintegration of a nuclear power is always a chess game with death, in which it's known precisely when the check and mate comes: doomsday for mankind."